Ironing out the kinks
Update: By twiddling something, LibraryThing helper database guy, Austin Swinney (profile), appears to have fixed the character issue. (The sort order is still Swedish—literally—but that's close to correct and I'll change it the next downtime.) I'm not sure what's happened to changes made in the last day. Can people send me problem instances?
So, LibraryThing got a new server. It's a good deal faster than the previous one. Although there have been some slow-downs while I did work—when I can, I prefer to leave the site up—average speed has increased substantially for most users. I've also turned back on some of the features I dimmed, eg., book-by-book recommendations. Yesterday some books were getting confused—thinking they were other books—but the problem was resolved.*
Here are some kinks I'm working through:
*For techies, crc32 in PHP is dependent on system architecture, so the move from a 32- to a 64-bit machine changed all my work numbers. Arg!
So, LibraryThing got a new server. It's a good deal faster than the previous one. Although there have been some slow-downs while I did work—when I can, I prefer to leave the site up—average speed has increased substantially for most users. I've also turned back on some of the features I dimmed, eg., book-by-book recommendations. Yesterday some books were getting confused—thinking they were other books—but the problem was resolved.*
Here are some kinks I'm working through:
- Accents and foreign scripts have been affected. The server move also involved an upgrade from MySQL 4.1 to MySQL 5, and I'm still straightening out the character-set changes. For what it's worth, it would probably be better if you didn't try to fix errors yourself, since they'll just become errors again when I fix the system.
- The library-suggestion page is still down. I'm going to bring it back based on a different, better algorithm, which also says WHY a book is being suggested.
*For techies, crc32 in PHP is dependent on system architecture, so the move from a 32- to a 64-bit machine changed all my work numbers. Arg!
posted by Tim at 2:09 PM
23 Comments:
For what it's worth, it would probably be better if you didn't try to fix errors yourself, since they'll just become errors again when I fix the system.
NOW you tell me! It's been driving me nuts since yesterday, and I've been madly fixing things (as I come across them). But I will be good and sit on my hands for a while.
the sample page looks great. i'm really excited about this new feature going up soon.
a question: when it is up, will the merged information be supplied to the global zeitgeist page? i would think that it should, but i wondered the same thing about merged tags and the global tag cloud doesn't reflect those.
nperrin
Question: merging author entries. Can I do that just now, or is the functionality turned off?
To clarify that last question: if I look at the detail page for an author, it sometimes has "This entry includes..." and gives me an option to include someone else. But when there isn't an option, but I know that two author headings are the same, is there any way to tell it to merge them?
(The two I have up just now are St. Gregory, Bishop of Tours and Gregory of Tours, but there's plenty of other such pairs)
There is a work-around on the author combining, when the system doesn't yet detect that they share a book But it's a little manual.
First, get the author codes for both authors. These codes are at the end of the URL. So, for your authors:
http://www.librarything.com/author/toursgregoryof
http://www.librarything.com/author/gregorysaintbishopof
Comes to: "toursgregoryof" and "gregorysaintbishopof"
(Sometimes you'll need to discard the phrase &norefer=1 from the URL.)
Once you have those, plug them into this URL:
http://www.librarything.com/authormerge.php?authors=XXXXX/XXXXX
replacing the XXXXXs with the two authors. So, in this case, the URL is:
http://www.librarything.com/authormerge.php?authors=toursgregoryof/gregorysaintbishopof
That's the deal. I'm hoping that publishing this doesn't cause anyone to run around pell mell combining inappropriate authors. Fortunately, combining authors leaves a trail, so if I notice problems I can change the "security stance."
Thanks for asking this one.
Not sure if I should put this here but it seems to be a "kink".
Note - this is in Firefox 1.5.0.1, not sure if it affects others...
If I show my catalogue in graphical view, and click to toggle between a bookcover/links a few times - the yellow navigation bar gets smaller everytime.
Similar problem in list view, if I click the icons to view the social info I have to click a couple of times (or open in a new tab) to actually get to the link, and again - the table containing the books shrinks.
I've seen the same thing (the shrinking). Seems to be Firefox-specific.
Someone's playing silly buggers - have a look at the Zeitgeist 100 Largest Libraries list...
The increased speed is awesome, and thanks for restoring the accented characters! I've started noticing some other bizarre happenings, however. For instance, if I check out Zeitgeist and click on many of the titles listed under "50 Most Contentious," I am delivered to the Tim Spalding catalog and not to the social page for that title. Also bizarre and inexplicable is that when I sort my catalog by sharedness (another word creation spawned from LibraryThing?), the result isn't a precise listing of the titles in ascending or descending numerical order but instead includes, for example, a book with 236 users sandwiched in between books with 248 and 250 users. Maybe, if you get a chance at some point, you could look into these phenomena? Thanks for making this site so fun (and addictive)!
PS - I'm on the California machine, if that makes a difference.
I have sheet music and music books that have an ISMN number, e.g. M-060-01608-0. Does anyone know where you can search for these? I'd like to add some of the music books here.
Full text. Yes I need to explore that. By full text, do you mean all books or all text within books in your library. Anyway, both are something I'm looking at.
Dates. I'll look into a site-wide data setting. I will not be implementing yyyy-mm-dd. I'm not sure everyone finds it unambiguous, and it just rubs me the wrong way.
Zeitgest. Sorry about this. When I rubuild it tonight all the links will go into the right place. Somehow it's caught between systems now.
Sharedness sorting. Good catch. I can fix this.
Library size: Yes, crazy, but not a prank. I'll fix it when I fix the Zeitgest.
The "most same books as you" went away when the Great Slowdown of 2006 happened. I'll bring it back soon.
oh my gawd, I am so pleased to see that the new book info page has all the covers/editions included. What fun.
you already can sort by those fields, i was wondering about that the other day. in catalog view, click on "change fields" which is in the top right-ish area of the catalog. you can then customize the five viewing styles to see exactly the fields you want, in exactly the order you want them. so if you just choose to include "date acquired" or whatever you can sort by that just like you'd sort by author or title.
-nperrin
Still seeing too many connections fro MySQL sometimes.
I would also love a "full text" search. It would not involve the contents of the books but would involve all tags and text fields including title, author, comments, reviews, the stuff in the MARC record, whatever - every database fiels which contains text and is not marked private to a specific user.
Looking for a downtime update?
I would like to see some way of controling column widths on my catalogue display. Some have quite a bit of comment and I sometimes want this column wider. Possibly selecting the same field twice on the change fields page could give a double width column.
Why is the LibraryThing uptime so unreliable?
This is what keeps me from buying a lifetime account... I'm not sure you'll still be around next year.
Why is Librarything down so often?
Well firstly the damn thing is still in beta.
Secondly I am sure that the uptake has been far greater than was originally imagined. The number of books in librarything is equivalent to a pretty damn big library (bigger than Seattle central library).
Those of us who have been here since the beginning have seen a degradation in speed in direct proportion to the numbers of people who sign up and catalogue their books.
We have to swallow this bitter pill of downtime now, or LibraryThing isn't going to be here next year or isn't going to be usable if it is. I would be far more worried if Tim was sitting on his hands not trying to fix performance (including buying new servers).
I hate to sound like a malcontent but I'm sure Tim appreciates constructive negative criticism. I understand the reasons for the downtime but it's getting to be so frequent that I'm never sure if it's the same one as when I last tried to add my new books and has lasted a long time, or if it's a new one and I always want to log on at the wrong times.
Last night it was offline, early this morning it was offline saying "should be back in the morning" but with no date. I don't know if I got on too early or if it's taking way longer than Tim thought because now it's the afternoon. (Mexico time shouldn't be far off LT time)
Anyway it's a bit frustrating when you're totally addicted and dependent on internet cafes.
Oh and it's too bad the view-only sample doesn't at least have a static mirror of some sort so I can see it while I'm waiting for the rest of the site to come back.
"This is what keeps me from buying a lifetime account... I'm not sure you'll still be around next year."
Oh, come on! First, it’s down often so that it can be improved. It’s in beta, which means it’s not a perfect, finished product yet. Further, even if it only lasted a year or two—it is $25! For Lifetime! You cannot beat that. It’s far more likely that Librarything will be around forever, in which case a $25 lifetime membership is the best bargain around.
One can certainly tolerate downtimes. What is inexcusable is to say that the site will be up at a time which will be then surreptitiously changed. First is was a couple of hours, then it was yesterday's evening, then it was today's morning... now Tim hasn't even bothered to change the sign. Are we to understand that this is going to be tomorrow's morning? Will the date move into the future as we approach it, as Alice's Jam Tomorrow?
Post a Comment
<< Home